Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
_through the spectacle of books_. An ounce of mother-wit, you know, is
worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian, for any thing that I have
heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking
example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and
the obstructions of laborious life.
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